Stockpiled Pesticides Harming African People's Environment Vast quantities of obsolete pesticides have posed a serious er to the environment and communities in Africa. In many countries the toxic chemicals have started to leak from corroding containers and are seeping into soil, groundwater, and rivers. Now a multimillion dollar international project is underway to rid the continent of the menace. The Africa Stockpiles Program (ASP) will soon send trained personnel to inventory pesticide stock piles and begin their safe export to Europe for incineration. Angela Mwandla, the program's coordinator, says estimates of government-controlled stockpiles top 50,000 tons. ,private pesticide dumps could raise the figure significantly. But because some people are trying to conceal their dumps from the government, it makes it more difficult to make an official statistics for these private pesticide &imps. Nearly every African country grapples with the problem. Ethiopia is one of the worst off, with an estimated 3,000 tons of obsolete pesticides. Other countries are better, but this still poses a big problem for these countries. Mwandla, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya, says the cleanup program could take 15 years and cost about 250 million dollars ( U. S. ). And he is not so sure if the government would agree to spend so much time and expenses over this project. The program's first phase -- estimated to cost 60 million dollars ( U. S. ) over six years -- will kick off in Ethiopia, Mall,Tunisia, Morocco, Tanzania, and South Africa. And if this works well, other countries will follow suit. Problem Decades in the Africa's stockpiles of poisonous chemicals have been accumulating over the past 40 years and longer. The problem has been spurred by poor training, weak controls, and aggressive marketing by chemical manufacturers, who sold countries more pesticides than they needed. Although the government has already started to pay attention to this problem, it will still take a long time to get this problem under control. The chemicals include brands such as DDT, and a range of organophosphate (有机磷酸脂的) pesticides used mainly for crop protection. And the effects of these pesticides will last over years even it becomes obsolete. Jan Betlem, a Dutch specialist in obsolete-pesticide elimination, painted a grim picture at a re cent media briefing in Nairobi, where the cleanup program was announced. He said many of the stockpiles were found in neglected buildings. Others were found in drums in grasslands, where they were covered by torn tarpaulins(防水油布) and plastic sheets or buried. All these, therefore, makes it more difficult for the work to carry on and makes this work lagging for longer periods. Many containers were corroding, adding spillage to the list of contamination problems. Toxins that have seeped into soils and groundwater have contaminated food, drinking water, and the air. And the immune system was greatly deteriorated after the people drink the contaminated water. Betlem has often found dead cats, birds, snakes, goats, and sheep inside and around buildings where corroded containers have started leaking. It is not unusual for children to play in the vicinity of the stockpiles. And therefore, this problem poses great er to the health of tile children. The meat of animals grazing in such areas is sold in public markets, adding to the build-up of toxins in people. Betlem says pesticides are normally obsolete for their intended use after two years, but from the effects listed above, it is clear that they remain hazardous for a much longer period of time. Prior Warning More than a decade ago, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization began warming African nations and others about the